DoCoMo to sell Japan’s first HSDPA mobile phones
August 27th, 2006 - Posted in OtherJapan’s NTT DoCoMo Inc. said on Thursday it will begin sales of a new mobile phone that lets customers download music and video clips about 10 times faster than existing models.
DoCoMo will sell Japan’s first HSDPA, or high-speed downlink packet access, handset made by NEC Corp. from August 31, becoming the first operator in the country to offer the faster wireless network. DoCoMo will first offer HSDPA connection in major cities and aims for nationwide coverage by March 2008.
The Japanese operator join global peers such as U.S.-based Cingular Wireless and Britain’s Vodafone Group Plc, which also are rolling out HSDPA in their markets. These carriers use the globally dominant W-CDMA wireless standard.
DoCoMo’s closest domestic rival KDDI Corp., which uses a different standard called CDMA 2000 that’s popular in the United States and parts of Asia, said last week it also plans to upgrade its network starting in December.
KDDI’s new network, called EV-DO Rev.A, offers a similar download speed to HSDPA but has a faster connection to upload files from the phones to the network.
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